De Blasio assails Amazon after deal's collapse

Fresh off Amazon’s decision to abandon its move to Queens, Mayor Bill de Blasio went national with his income inequality message by deriding the very company he eagerly negotiated with three months earlier.

In a Meet the Press interview on Sunday, the mayor blamed Amazon for ditching its plans, saying it couldn’t handle public criticism from politicians.

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De Blasio spent three months defending the deal, which would have yielded at least 25,000 jobs, against criticism from the left flank of the Democratic Party. Left-leaning Democrats like presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders have publicly admonished New York’s deal with Amazon, which is run by the richest man in the world.

In the interview, de Blasio sought to eviscerate the company while professing that deals like the one he negotiated are, in fact, progressive.

“The episode exposed a growing rift nationally between the Democratic progressives and its traditional centrists,” anchor Chuck Todd said in his opener, describing de Blasio as someone “who I guess would argue he’s caught in the middle there.”

Not quite, the mayor said. “I’m a progressive and I’m proud to be. Progressives are about jobs for working people,” he said.

Todd asked the mayor, “Why did fellow progressives not trust you” that it was a good deal?

“Chuck, it’s a democracy. I have no problem with my fellow progressives critiquing a deal or wanting more from Amazon. I wanted more from Amazon, too,” he replied. “But the bottom line is this is an example of an abuse of corporate power.”

He added, “the progressive movement needs to be about equality but also about opportunity for working people.”

“Who are you speaking to here — Amazon or the progressive movement? It sounded like just now you were trying to explain to the progressive movement how economics works,” Todd said.

De Blasio replied that progressives can support corporate growth without betraying their core values.

“I think this is where we will resonate with the American people if we make clear we’re on their side and we’re going to produce for them,” the mayor added, before reiterating that he is not ruling out a 2020 presidential run.

De Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in a rare partnership, agreed to allow Amazon to bypass the traditional public land use process to build a 4-million-to-8-million-square-foot headquarters in Long Island City. The company would have received about $3 billion in tax breaks and incentives — roughly half of that through programs they were automatically entitled to by law.

But Amazon announced it was canceling its plans Thursday morning, after months of opposition to the tax incentives and its labor practices and a distrust of corporate America within the Democratic Party. A leading opponent, state Sen. Mike Gianaris, was appointed to a state board that would have had some control over the final outcome.

While Cuomo blamed the state Senate, de Blasio saved all his fire for a company he now wants to distance himself from, after saying in November, "I want to give credit where credit is due. Amazon came forward with a vision."

De Blasio said the deal was too “particular” for “hindsight” when asked if he would have done it differently, or not done it at all.

“Obviously a group of very powerful people, the ultimate members of the 1 percent, got together in a boardroom in Seattle and made a very arbitrary decision. We couldn’t have seen that coming,” he said.